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Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel in the Trump Administration: the Costs of Public Disclosure of FISA Requests

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Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel in the Trump Administration: the Costs of Public Disclosure of FISA Requests Fordham Law Review Volume 87 Issue 5 Article 6 2019 Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel in the Trump Administration: The Costs of Public Disclosure of FISA Requests Peter Margulies Roger Williams University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons Recommended Citation Peter Margulies, Legal Dilemmas Facing White House Counsel in the Trump Administration: The Costs of Public Disclosure of FISA Requests, 87 Fordham L. Rev. 1913 (2019). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol87/iss5/6 This Colloquium is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LEGAL DILEMMAS FACING WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: THE COSTS OF PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF FISA REQUESTS Peter Margulies* INTRODUCTION Not every presidential administration can forge a new brand of government lawyering. Historically, government lawyering has swung between two poles: (1) dialogic lawyering, which stresses reasoned elaboration, respect for institutions, and continuity with unwritten norms embodied in past practice; and (2) insular lawyering, which entails opaque definitions, disregard of other institutions, and departures from unwritten norms.1 Because President Trump regularly signals his disdain for institutions, such as the intelligence community, and unwritten norms, such as prosecutorial independence,2 senior lawyers in the White House have added a new mode of legal representation that entails ad hoc adjustments to President Trump’s mercurial decisions and triage among the presidential decisions they will try to temper. Call it: lifeboat lawyering. Lifeboat lawyering, as practiced by Donald F. McGahn II—the first White House Counsel of the Trump administration3—and others, involves * Professor of Law, Roger Williams University School of Law. B.A., Colgate University; J.D., Columbia Law School. I thank Bob Bauer and participants at the Fordham Law Review Colloquium on The Varied Roles, Regulation, and Professional Responsibility of Government Lawyers for comments on a previous draft. For more information on the Colloquium, which was hosted by the Fordham Law Review and the Stein Center for Law and Ethics on October 12, 2018, at Fordham University School of Law, see Bruce A. Green, Lawyers in Government Service—a Foreword, 87 FORDHAM L. REV. 1791 (2019). 1. See Peter Margulies, Reforming Lawyers into Irrelevance?: Reconciling Crisis and Constraint at the Office of Legal Counsel, 39 PEPP. L. REV. 809, 815 (2012) [hereinafter Margulies, Reforming Lawyers]; Peter Margulies, True Believers at Law: National Security Agendas, the Regulation of Lawyers, and the Separation of Powers, 68 MD. L. REV. 1, 66–70 (2008); Peter Margulies, When to Push the Envelope: Legal Ethics, the Rule of Law, and National Security Strategy, 30 FORDHAM INT’L L.J. 642, 661 (2007). Professor Wendel also identified similar factors—particularly a common body of unwritten norms—as key to distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate government lawyering. See W. Bradley Wendel, Government Lawyers in the Trump Administration, 69 HASTINGS L.J. 275, 277 (2017). 2. See Bruce A. Green & Rebecca Roiphe, Can the President Control the Department of Justice?, 70 ALA. L. REV. 1, 16–17 (2018). 3. McGahn resigned as White House Counsel in October 2018. See Michael S. Schmidt & Maggie Haberman, McGahn, Soldier for Trump and Witness Against Him, Leaves White 1913 1914 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 87 improvising adjustments to presidential policies or slow-walking action despite President Trump’s urge to take more drastic actions, like firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller.4 In this respect, those practicing lifeboat lawyering echo the familiar virtues of dialogic lawyering and preserve the legitimacy of the administration in the face of critics who contend that it is out of control. As we shall see, however, lifeboat lawyering’s ongoing improvisations are themselves difficult to control and sometimes veer dangerously close to the excesses of insular lawyering. House, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 17, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/politics/don- mcgahn-leaves-trump-administration.html [https://perma.cc/C4RV-PJJT]. Beginning in late October 2018, Washington lawyer Emmet Flood directed the Office of White House Counsel on an interim basis as part of a transition to a new permanent counsel, Pat Cipollone. See John Wagner, Josh Dawsey & Felicia Sonmez, Trump Vows Executive Order to End Birthright Citizenship, a Move Most Legal Experts Say Would Run Afoul of the Constitution, WASH. POST (Oct. 30, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-eyeing-executive- order-to-end-citizenship-for-children-of-noncitizens-born-on-us-soil/2018/10/30/66892050- dc29-11e8-b3f0-62607289efee_story.html [https://perma.cc/ZJK2-QWBF]. Since President Trump regularly pushes to implement policies that rely on aggressive interpretations of applicable law, the issues described in this Article will likely persist. See id. 4. As of this writing, Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian efforts to disrupt or influence the 2016 presidential election. Rebecca R. Ruiz & Mark Landler, Robert Mueller, Former F.B.I. Director, Is Named Special Counsel for Russia Investigation, N.Y. TIMES (May 17, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/robert-mueller-special-counsel-russia- investigation.html [http://perma.cc/8MZW-5J42]. Several media outlets reported or commented on McGahn’s efforts to persuade President Trump to deliberate before seeking to fire Mueller or former FBI Director James Comey. See, e.g., BOB WOODWARD, FEAR: TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE 163 (2018) (explaining that McGahn urged President Trump to follow a process for dismissing Comey and describing how White House staff increasingly invoked the necessity of following a process as a stall tactic); see also Editorial, The Anonymous Resistance, WALL ST. J. (Sept. 6, 2018, 7:23 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/the- anonymous-resistance-1536276239 [https://perma.cc/85UQ-NSTE] (discussing internal administration moves to postpone or temper various actions by President Trump); Opinion, I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 5, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous- resistance.html [https://perma.cc/FJZ2-MKZ3]. Officials on and off the record have contested these accounts. See, e.g., Peter Baker & Maggie Haberman, Trump Lashes Out After Reports of ‘Quiet Resistance’ by Staff, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 5, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/ 05/us/politics/trump-new-york-times-anonymous-editorial.html [http://perma.cc/LJ46-J297]. Because these and similar stories have become pervasive with respect to the Trump administration, this Article assumes that the accounts are accurate. Nevertheless, an informed reader should always seek corroboration of such accounts and remain open to the possibility that particular accounts are inaccurate in whole or part. Moreover, this Article acknowledges that such attempts to moderate presidential behavior have occurred from time to time in past administrations. See id. (describing efforts in the Wilson, Reagan, and Nixon administrations to limit presidential activities). However, if current accounts are accurate, the incidence and intensity of such efforts have risen substantially in the current administration. 2019] PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF FISA REQUESTS 1915 Any administration contains a mix of lawyering styles.5 There are examples of dialogic lawyering in the Trump administration,6 as well as insular and lifeboat modes.7 To focus on what is distinctive about the current administration, this Article focuses on the interaction between the latter two approaches. A comprehensive understanding of continuity and change in the Trump administration’s various lawyering styles will have to wait until another day, although that deeper understanding will be worth the effort. The interaction of insular and lifeboat lawyering in the Trump administration often centers on unwritten norms. Sometimes called “soft law,”8 unwritten norms are an important aspect of governance since they generally have bipartisan acceptance and thus form a backdrop for policymakers.9 This Article treats departures from unwritten norms as insular lawyering. In certain situations, including advising President Trump against firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump administration lawyers have sought to preserve unwritten norms such as prosecutorial independence.10 Those efforts, which often take place behind the scenes, are 5. Professor Robert Bauer, a former White House Counsel, has provided an excellent descriptive and normative account of lawyering in the dynamic national security sphere. See generally Robert F. Bauer, The National Security Lawyer, In Crisis: When the “Best View” of the Law May Not Be the Best View, 31 GEO. J. LEGAL ETHICS 175 (2018). But see Mary DeRosa, National Security Lawyering: The Best View of the Law as a Regulative Ideal, 31 GEO. J. LEGAL ETHICS 277, 279 (2018); Christopher Fonzone & Dana Remus, What About When the Best View Is the Best View?, 31 GEO. J. LEGAL ETHICS 305, 331 (2018) (suggesting that the goal of providing the
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